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AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, Cyborg Commando, etc.

All games from late 80s to mid 90s. All games where complexity for complexity's sake, slow gameplay, and opaque goals were the norm. Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? Specially in contrast to the periods that came immediately before (70s-80s) and after (2000s-now) ? Can someone positively constrast those rules to the kinds of, say... Runequest and OD&D, or the recent entries of OSR and PbtA?

I always thought everyone loved 2nd edition.

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, etc.

All games from late 80s to mid 90s. All games where complexity for complexity's sake, slow gameplay, and opaque goals were the norm. Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? Specially in contrast to the periods that came immediately before (70s-80s) and after (2000s-now) ? Can someone positively constrast those rules to the kinds of, say... Runequest and OD&D, or the recent entries of OSR and PbtA?

Personally I don't think any major or famous rulesets come within an ass's roar of being the worst ruleset. That'd go to some of the pure crud which is now forgotten.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1010940I always thought everyone loved 2nd edition.

I did until the Player's Option books came along. After those? I was done.

If I wanted a fantasy game that complex, I would have continued playing Rolemaster.

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, etc.

All games from late 80s to mid 90s. All games where complexity for complexity's sake, slow gameplay, and opaque goals were the norm. Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? Specially in contrast to the periods that came immediately before (70s-80s) and after (2000s-now) ? Can someone positively constrast those rules to the kinds of, say... Runequest and OD&D, or the recent entries of OSR and PbtA?

Except none of those were bad games, slow games, opaque games or anyof that. Aside from Synnabar.

You fail at trolling.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1010940I always thought everyone loved 2nd edition.

Not in my neck of the woods.  It was the most reviled edition.  Until 3rd came.  Then it was 3.5, then it was 4th.

I'd have to say Palladium's Rifts was the worst for me.  Stat numbers that mean nothing below a certain rank, seemingly arbitrary percentile based skills, 'classes' with widely varying power levels and no sense of scale (To be honest, some were kind of obvious, like the Mind Melter or the various baby Dragons, but others were deceptive.  A Headhunter should be comparable to a Glitter Boy, yes?  Nope.  Hell, even a Cyber-Knight wasn't very impressive at the start) and finally the Vietnam War technology limits for giant futuristic war machines and basic rifles that were better than anything in terms of raw staying power, oh and the SDC creep is another issue.

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, etc.

Funny, our group loved Kult and Rifts. Twilight 2000 was too simulations and fine grained in its mechanics for its own good. Deadlands had a great idea and setting, playing it seemed to be an exercise in novelty ofr novelty's sake.

To me 3e and d20 was terrible.

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, etc.

Of those I actually got to play... far from the worst, I'd say.
Kult's rules didn't really match its setting, IMO... but they worked.
Shadowrun and Deadlands weren't my favorite games, but that had as much or more to do with who I was playing them with... and my not liking some of the 'gimmicks' of Deadlands... but that's a matter of taste, not being objectively bad.

It's tough to make a generalization. In those years we also had Hero System (84), Gurps (86), WEG Star Wars (87), and Vampire: The Masquerade (91). While each game has strengths and weaknesses, as well as fans and detractors, none of them are among the worst games ever produced. In fact, they are some of the most influential games in the hobby.

Quote from: Aglondir;1010959It's tough to make a generalization. In those years we also had Hero System (84), Gurps (86), WEG Star Wars (87), and Vampire: The Masquerade (91). While each game has it's fans and detractors, none of those four were among the worst games ever produced. In fact, they are some of the most influential games in the hobby.

Agreed. But at the same time the period had such horrid rulesets as Shadowrun 1s edition, Mechwarrior RPG and World of Synnibar. Oh and didn't Cyborg Commando come out by this time too?

Did any other era have such a bad batch?

Quote from: Aglondir;1010959It's tough to make a generalization. In those years we also had Hero System (84), Gurps (86), WEG Star Wars (87), and Vampire: The Masquerade (91). While each game has strengths and weaknesses, as well as fans and detractors, none of them are among the worst games ever produced. In fact, they are some of the most influential games in the hobby.

And Call of Cthulhu (1980). The OP's theorem is fatally flawed.

You're just being selective and arbitrary in your judgement. Some people would say that games like The Burning Wheel or even D&D3.5/Pathfinder are complex and slow to run. You conveniently omit games like the D6 system, Amber, Castle Falkenstein or Prince Valiant from your list. Ars Magica, certainly in it's 1st and 2nd editions was no more complex that RuneQuest or even something like Mythras from later eras.

You are merely trying to create a narrative, again, where you can claim so-called 'indie games' like Sorcerer or Apocalypse World actually have more significance than they do. You don't need the help of psychedelic drugs to see through you.

Quote from: Herne's SonAnd Call of Cthulhu (1980). The OP's theorem is fatally flawed.

1980 is not late 80s, as indicated in the first post.

GURPS is a game that I never enjoyed, despite trying hard to like it and being a fan of the Fantasy Trip, but I would not call it one of the worst games ever.  As for Shadowrun 1e, we played it and had fun. It could have been better, but I don't remember it being that bad, at least with just the core book.

Mega-Traveler. That's truly on my list for the worst ever.

Convoluted character generation where your character could die before ever making it to play. And routinely did.

And tons of behind the scenes busy work for the GM to create things that 9 times out of 10, would never really matter to or even effect the player characters.

I don't remember things being the way the OP described. I think there was some wonky GM advice floating around at the time, but the mechanics of the games themselves were fine. Some games were complex but some were fairly straight forward (and 2E was pretty much the same core system as 1E---and the expansion stuff was all optional and more GM centered than the later 3E expansions). And you had some unusual games like TORG. I think in terms of mechanics at least the late 80s and 90s had variety. The early 2000s was the d20 boom. There was other stuff going on, but the shelves were filled with d20 games (which could get pretty complex at times).

Balderdash I say!  The eighties gave us great games.  Also, Megatraveller character creation is so narrowly modified from Classic Traveller as to be largely the same game.  They added a special duty roll and an extra skill if you made a roll by more that four.  And yes, you can die in character creation.  That 222222 character enlists as a Belter or a Scout and dies on term 1.  Sadly, MT actually had a failed survival roll as a half term that ended character creation.  Death was optional.

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, Cyborg Commando, etc.

All games from late 80s to mid 90s.

You're listing diamonds next to turds, so all I can see is "hey, here's a list of things that contain carbon";). Or, in the case of the games, "words on a page".
Just keep in mind Over the Edge and Unknown Armies were first published in the 90ies, too, and VtM was published near in the middle of the period you mention.

QuoteAll games where complexity for complexity's sake, slow gameplay, and opaque goals were the norm.

Looking at your list, no.

QuoteCould we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games?

You could argue anything. In this case, you would be wrong:).

QuoteSpecially in contrast to the periods that came immediately before (70s-80s) and after (2000s-now) ?

QuoteCan someone positively constrast those rules to the kinds of, say... Runequest and OD&D, or the recent entries of OSR and PbtA?

Yes. I'm pretty sure many people can, especially those that don't like at least one of OSR and/or PbtA would easily have an easy time doing that:D!
But why bother? You like OSR and PbtA, just buy those. And whoever likes those games you abhor, can purchase them, due to the PDF and POD offers!

Reports of character death during character generation in Traveller are greatly exaggerated.

I think people are conflating personal taste to rules design. I love Shadowrun, but saying it doesn't have problems is disrespectful to games that were actually well-crafted like Pendragon or Beyond the Wall (just to cite some examples).

My point is not that all games of this era - late 80s to mid 90s- were bad, but that this Era contains the worst batch of badly designed rulesets in the hobby.

Except for Cyborg Commando or Synnibar, I'd rather play any of those games than PbtA or any other narrative RPG you'd want to name.  The latest versions of Shadowrun are far worse than the first, same for the latest version of CoC.  Savage Worlds is way faster than Deadlands, and probably better for a wider scope of genres, but that's about it.

90's games tended generally to up the complexity as well as bring in the metaplot, but they also introduced some of the most influential properties in gaming.

So basically you're either a drooling moron, which we know you aren't, or you're just being an annoying little troll, because most people here aren't fans of your playstyle.

So, 1/10, because you included Synnibar and Cyborg Commando in a cheap attempt to make the post plausible.

CRKrueger: I'd rather play Shadowrun 1st edition than Pendragon.

Do you honestly think Shadowrun 1st edition is a better designed game than Pendragon?

Quote from: Itachi;1010998CRKrueger: I'd rather play Shadowrun 1st edition than Pendragon.

Do you honestly think Shadowrun 1st edition is a better designed game than Pendragon?

Pendragon being a game that was released late 80s and built up popularity in the 90s, of course.

Quotebut that this Era contains the worst batch of badly designed rulesets in the hobby.

That would be the games associated with The Forge.

Quote from: Itachi;1010991I think people are conflating personal taste to rules design. I love Shadowrun, but saying it doesn't have problems is disrespectful to games that were actually well-crafted like Pendragon or Beyond the Wall (just to cite some examples).

The first edition of Pendragon is from 1985, right in the middle of the first decade you mentioned:).
Flashing Blades is to swaschbuckling what Pendragon is to the Arthurian epics, and it's published in the 1984;).
Your decades are way, way off.

And I'm far from calling Shadowrun well-designed, but it seems I'm in the minority on that forum. So I'm not going to comment.
Ars Magica and Twilight 2000, however, are excellent games for their genres. That's assuming the players buy in, of course, but that's just as true for any PbtA game:p!

And you already have a guy who have an easy time preferring the games you listed to PbtA games, we're waiting for the first to admit preferring them to the OSR ones:D!

AsenG, if you read the OP, you'll see I mentioned "Late 80s". And, again, my point was not to say that all games from the period are bad - just that the period produced the biggest batch of poor rule sets in the hobby. Those are different things.

But hey, if no one agrees with that, no prob. It was just an impression that I wanted to share. ;)

Quote from: Itachi;10109681980 is not late 80s, as indicated in the first post.

and Twilight 2000 came out in 1984 which isn't late 80s by any standard I've seen.


The mid 1980s and 1990s was a golden age of gaming. RPGs had become as mainstream as comic books, you could find 2nd and 3rd tier games at mall book stores, D&D had a Saturday morning cartoon. Sure there were some turds a huge number of games were being produced and everybody who was anybody in the game market wanted in, Avalon Hill, Hasbro etc.
It was also a time that self publishing was beginning to become available to the common person. For the first time a person could write a game on their computer, print it out and make as many copies as they could sell at the local copy shop for a penny a page.


Also I think worth pointing out that the hobby as we recognize it is only 44 years old, so claiming a period of nominally 15 years or 1/3 of the time the hobby has existed, at a time of major growth produced a lot of bad games is kind of like pointing out the sky is blue. While your premise may hold some merit out of shear volume, I disagree wth some of your examples of bad games.

Plenty of terrible systems in any era I'd say. I find most d20 stuff bland.

WEG Star Wars was a great little Star Wars game. 2e D&D was a solid restructure of the rules (if not the tone) that produced a very playable, enjoyable D&D (we ignored most splat). As a system it works better than 1e imo but I do like the tone of 1e better. OD&D would be my preferred style though.

We did play some TERRIBLE systems in that era. We played Palladium's Heroes Unlimted & TMNT which were amazingly unwieldy & overly complex, breakable & inconsistent. But we played it dammit and you could still get good games out of it despite it all somehow.

2E D&D is superior to 1e by almost any measure. I can imagine the splats made it worse but as they were all so purely optional I don't see that as an issue. I do find a lot of systems from then clumsy but so were a lot of the systems from the 70s and 80s.

Quote from: Itachi;1011003AsenG, if you read the OP, you'll see I mentioned "Late 80s". And, again, my point was not to say that all games from the period are bad - just that the period produced the biggest batch of poor rule sets in the hobby. Those are different things.

But hey, if no one agrees with that, no prob. It was just an impression that I wanted to share. ;)

But it's not in the title, and you listed a game or two from the early 80ies, too, so I kinda forgot about the phrasing of the OP:).

Just to make it clear, Ars Magica, Kult and T2000 are the only ones on your list that I'd actually consider playing on the merits of the game system and/or setting, though I might consider Shadowrun and V:tM as well with the right group;).

The 1990's gave us two of my favorite RPG's of all time, Vampire: The Masquerade in the early 90's and Big Eyes Small Mouth in the late 90's. I don't know why anyone would see such an era as a low point.

If there was any low point for RPG's, it'd have to be the mid-to-late 2000's. The D20 Bubble of the early 2000's had gone bust, Guardians of the Order went out of business, World of Warcraft and other MMO's were unfortunately extremely popular and seemed like they would kill off traditional RPG's as we knew it. CCP Studios "merged" with White Wolf and completely gutted the company just to get the IP for an MMO that ultimately would never see the light of day, and the less said about D&D 4th Edition, the better.

Literally there were only three good things in RPG's from the period of 2004-2009. They were the blossoming of the OSR in earnest as a response to 4E's awfulness, the release of the highly underrated first edition of Vampire: The Requiem at the beginning of this era and the release of Pathfinder at the end of it, which along with D&D 5e in 2014, helped create a somewhat small yet also significant and noticeable resurgence in RPG's after the late 2000's slump.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1010940I always thought everyone loved 2nd edition.

I don't. I'd rather play 2e than the WotC editions, but I prefer original D&D or 1e AD&D over 2e. I think the core 2e rules aren't too bad, although where they differ from 1e I almost always prefer the 1e approach. But I found the 2e splat books and options books to be pretty terrible (not to mention the adventures -- just not my cup of tea).

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1011030I don't. I'd rather play 2e than the WotC editions, but I prefer original D&D or 1e AD&D over 2e. I think the core 2e rules aren't too bad, although where they differ from 1e I almost always prefer the 1e approach. But I found the 2e splat books and options books to be pretty terrible (not to mention the adventures -- just not my cup of tea).

Hey, 2e gave us Ravenloft, the best of the published D&D settings and the best version of it too, the 1990 "Realm of Terror" black boxed set. I know technically Ravenloft debuted as a module in the later days of 1e, but the setting as we know it didn't begin in earnest until 2e.

Though 1e AD&D is better in a lot of ways due to no censorship and less bloat. You could probably run a Black Box Ravenloft game using the 1e corebooks and the Realm of Terror book with fairly minimal mechanical changes.

Can't say I'm a Ravenloft fan either (in its 1e module or later 2e versions). I know a lot of people liked it, and there's no arguing taste. If you're a fan, that's okay with me. :)

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, Cyborg Commando, etc.

Taking a closer look at that list, there's not much there I was into. I did enjoy playing Twilight 2000 (although I didn't GM it, and don't recall much about the rules). Already gave my opinion on 2e. Played Rifts a few times (never GM'd or owned it), but wasn't my thing. Never played any of the others. I did look over the Cyborg Commando rules, but they didn't appeal.

Some games I did have fun playing or running include:
Ninjas & Superspies (ran a short campaign with this that everyone liked)
Palladium Fantasy (played, only -- enjoyed it)
Bushido (ran this quite a bit -- had fun)
Rolemaster 2e (ran this quite a bit for Middle Earth -- had fun)

More recently, I've also come to appreciate the Flashing Blades rules. Not sure what year they were published, so it may have been earlier 80s.

My most-played games of the late 80s and 90s were 1e AD&D, a campaign with classic D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Stormbringer, and Rolemaster 2e. The RPG industry was going in some other directions that weren't really to my taste, so I just did my own thing.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1011034Can't say I'm a Ravenloft fan either (in its 1e module or later 2e versions). I know a lot of people liked it, and there's no arguing taste. If you're a fan, that's okay with me. :)

Understandable, I myself am a huge fan of Ravenloft.

Another good game from the 90's was the Sailor Moon Role-Playing Game and Resource Book, published in 1999 by Guardians of the Order.

The era settings were the best, I give you that. Ravenloft, Planescape, Falkenstein' New Europe, Al Amarja, Shadowrun's Sixth World, Kult's Metropolis. Some insanely creative stuff back then.

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, Cyborg Commando, etc.

All games from late 80s to mid 90s. All games where complexity for complexity's sake, slow gameplay, and opaque goals were the norm. Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? Specially in contrast to the periods that came immediately before (70s-80s) and after (2000s-now) ? Can someone positively constrast those rules to the kinds of, say... Runequest and OD&D, or the recent entries of OSR and PbtA?

I definitely know what you mean, but the 2e AD&D PHB/DMG/MM doesn't suffer from this and I never bought many 2e supplement books so I avoided it there. I guess the 1e Wilderness Survival Guide & to a lesser extent the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide were exemplars.

Starting around 1982 you see lots of these games where complexity is piled on complexity, often in ways that are simply poor design - you could take out several steps and get the same result. Early examples include for me Daredevils and Space Opera - the books are still fairly short by modern standards, yet the systems are very unwieldy. Later on, stuff like the Aliens RPG, based on a notoriously unwieldy core system. Actually for me I would even count Cyberpunk: 2020*. I did actually get my head around the Traveller: New Era personal rules, though not the starship rules.

I tended to never actually run these systems BiTD, instead use as sourcebooks - we would convert everything over to 1e AD&D and have demigod Cavaliers fighting Araska Security troopers in power armour, or I would run the Aliens setting using Call of Cthulu/BRP.

*Thinking about it, I may just have disliked the 'broken' combat system, where Solos always dominated all other classes and armour could easily make a PC invulnerable.

Quote from: zarathustra;1011008Plenty of terrible systems in any era I'd say.

Agreed. There have been shit-rules published throughout the history of Rpgs, from the 1970s through to the 2010s. And plenty of gems. I don't think any decade has been any worse than any others.

I'd guess that by sheer volume there are more bad rules published now than ever before, but it might have peaked ten years ago it's not like I have statistics.

Q:  Late 80s to 90s: the worst rules the hobby ever produced ?

A: I have no way of knowing as I haven't played every RPG ever made since 1974.

Supplemental A: Also, who cares? Were you forced to play them?

As a long time Traveller fan, I've got to say that Megatraveller and the subsequent Traveller:TNE really turned me off. There is some great stuff in each, but the Striker/Azhanti High Lightning approach to combat and vehicle/starship construction was a horrible overload in Megatraveller and the "house system" for GDW at the time really just didn't sit well with me for Traveller:TNE - what was done with the metaplot in each was also terrible IMHO.

A big part of gaming is personal taste. I do not care for the massive amounts of bookkeeping that 3.e required and 4.e was plain terrible in my mind . If these are games others enjoy fine, I make no judgement on the way you play pretend.

Quote from: S'mon;1011039I guess the 1e Wilderness Survival Guide & to a lesser extent the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide were exemplars [of rules supplement rot].

Yeah, definitely, in my opinion. I have all the 1e hardbacks, but those are in pristine condition because they never leave the shelf.

Quote from: S'mon;1011039I definitely know what you mean, but the 2e AD&D PHB/DMG/MM doesn't suffer from this and I never bought many 2e supplement books so I avoided it there. I guess the 1e Wilderness Survival Guide & to a lesser extent the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide were exemplars.

   Here's a question: By the time 2E got to the hardcover rules supplements (as opposed to just 'books of stuff' like Tome of Magic and the Book of Artifacts), the marketing was that they were meant to be used on a 'pick and choose' and 'build-your-own-game' basis. How did 1E approach things?

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1011095Here's a question: By the time 2E got to the hardcover rules supplements (as opposed to just 'books of stuff' like Tome of Magic and the Book of Artifacts), the marketing was that they were meant to be used on a 'pick and choose' and 'build-your-own-game' basis. How did 1E approach things?

I'm pretty sure Unearthed Arcana was marketed as YOU MUST BUY THIS, which was pretty stupid. So was Deities & Demigods - after all you can't have religion in your game without a monster manual of deity stat blocks! :D
I don't think DSG & WSG claimed to be necessary, but neither was there a 'build your game' message.

I believe the general idea with 1e was that "official is official." But we just ignored that and went with what we liked.

Personally, my core 1e is the PH and the DMG. I take what I like from the monster books. I don't exclude D&DG, but I also don't get much use out of it. I cherry pick from UA: with the exception of spells, most of my cherry picks are from the DM section, rather than the players' section. I pretty much ignore WSG and DSG and the setting hardcovers. I also pretty much ignore Manual of the Planes, preferring to do my own take on that.

Yeah, one purpose of 1e was to have a "tournament standard" official rule set which appealed to the wargamer crowd/purpose they thought was important. Personally I think that was limiting but that is where they came from and I have the benefit of hindsight and it shaped their view of gaming.

1e was a game that worked- but I ignored half the DMG even to make it work in a way I could understand- no psionic, no weapon vs armour- we were kids & didn't have time for that stuff. We played the PHB as canon, added what we could from the DMG (for the first few years we had no idea what the hell an attack matrix from the back of the book was, we were just winging it & assumed you needed 18 str & +4 weapons by the time you got to name level). We added in stuff from basic & expert that worked too.

The gaming public had different expectations from game system in those days.

Anyway to OP, I tend to think the '80s had a flowering of badly designed and over complicated simulationist rulesets, but the '90s was more the era of adventure design nadir, with terrible railroading, metaplot, and PCs-as-bystanders commonplace.

There's plenty of complexity for complexity's sake in 1e, Champions, and GURPS. So that whole issue was in full swing by 1980.

Quote from: S'mon;1011159Anyway to OP, I tend to think the '80s had a flowering of badly designed and over complicated simulationist rulesets, but the '90s was more the era of adventure design nadir, with terrible railroading, metaplot, and PCs-as-bystanders commonplace.

Well remembered. Coincidently, I think this dark age of adventure design covered the exact period I mentioned in the OP, from mid/late 80s to late 90s. I remember some Dragonlance and Shadowrun advice where the GM is instructed to not let players deviate from the plot, and if the players insist, then "stop the game and ha e a conversation" with them.

About D&D3e and 4e, they also don't do anything for me because I don't like the goals they set out to reach. But the fact they have clear goals and do reach them effectively, is something lots of games from 80s/90s can't say about em.

Quote from: Itachi;1011169But the fact they have clear goals and do reach them effectively, is something lots of games from 80s/90s can't say about em.

There were a ton of games that were basically just character generation + combat + task resolution (maybe!), with no answer to "so what do we do?" I rem buying the d20 Fading Suns conversion and it made no attempt at all to advise what the PCs were supposed to be doing.

Justin Alexander's discussion of 'incomplete game structures' was dead on, IMO.

Dungeons & Dragons originally didn't have much more than mechanical resolution systems, and tables of statistics and measures needed for same.  Somehow many of us figured out all sorts of answers to "so what do we do?", dungeon crawling being just one of them.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1011178Dungeons & Dragons originally didn't have much more than mechanical resolution systems, and tables of statistics and measures needed for same.  Somehow many of us figured out all sorts of answers to "so what do we do?", dungeon crawling being just one of them.

Bollocks. Old D&D is the poster child for a well directed game, with its explicit structures esp dungeon adventures - go in dungeon, get treasure, get XP, repeat. Conversely it lacked a task resolution system!

And yet we did so much more with it than just endless dungeon crawls.  Many of the things we did were not even hinted at in the rules.  Bollocks indeed!

As for the worst rules the hobby has ver produced, just look at the absolute drek the current decade has produced and continues to produce.

Quote from: S'mon;1011170There were a ton of games that were basically just character generation + combat + task resolution (maybe!), with no answer to "so what do we do?" I rem buying the d20 Fading Suns conversion and it made no attempt at all to advise what the PCs were supposed to be doing.

But D&D3/4 are combat-oriented games, no? At least that's the impression I had from the couple games I played and by reading the corebooks. 4e is even explicit about it. Contrast that with, say, Shadowrun, which in theory is a mission/heist game, but in practice the rules make combat more than 50% of it (my god, I remember the endless combat turns with dread).

And that's the problem of those late 80s/90s games in my view. Whatever the central themes or premises supposedly were, combat made up more than half the rules and intended play experience. And this combat was usually envisioned through a physics simulation lens that most of times had nothing to do with those initial premises. You had some exceptions like Over the Edge and Everway, sure, but those were exceptions.

QuoteJustin Alexander's discussion of 'incomplete game structures' was dead on, IMO

Thanks for pointing this. Just read it, and yeah, it's a superb analysis.

Guy plays some trendy wrong games in his youth. Foolishly blames an entire decade of the game industry for his mistake. Later he finds other trendy games he likes better in a different decade and praises entire industry in response. Waste of time YouTube video at eleven.

Quote from: Bren;1011190Guy plays some trendy wrong games in his youth. Foolishly blames an entire decade of the game industry for his mistake. Later he finds other trendy games he likes better in a different decade and praises entire industry in response. Waste of time YouTube video at eleven.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1995[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, Cyborg Commando, etc.

All games from late 80s to mid 90s. All games where complexity for complexity's sake, slow gameplay, and opaque goals were the norm. Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? Specially in contrast to the periods that came immediately before (70s-80s) and after (2000s-now) ? Can someone positively constrast those rules to the kinds of, say... Runequest and OD&D, or the recent entries of OSR and PbtA?

I am going to start by addressing the premise that I think underlies this, rather than any specifics. That is 'when was the Golden Age/Dark Age of ____ (rpgs/comics/music/movies/etc.)?'

This is not unlike a discussion I've seen a dozen or more times related to music. Usually with the 70s being considered the dark ages and the 60s considered the golden era. This usually involves references to Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, or the likes for the 60s and disco for the 70s. It conveniently ignores all sorts of amazing work in prog rock, new wave, hard rock, or even good old fashioned general rock (of the Tom Petty ilk) from the 70s, or that the 60s have some amazingly bad/bland hits (ex. of the top 5 longest running #1 songs of 1969, two of them--the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" and the 5th Dimension's "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In"-- are novelty gimmicks/hits from a musical).

This is really just the same thing. You are selectively remembering the bad stuff that occurred in the late-80s-through-90s, and not the stuff that happened at other times.

Mind you, there are functional distinctions between the eras. The 2000s saw a whole bunch of the 'I want to become a game publisher' energy that otherwise would have gone into bad games and expressed it in the 3rd-party D20 supplement market and into the retroclone/OSR project market (the truly bad/forgettable parts of which are, well, forgotten). The 70s to early 80s was the beginning of the movement, and like the beginning of the movie industry or rock and roll, we really never even heard of much of the bad first attempts at entering the market, because it never found distribution. Sure, we've all heard the story of Ken St. Andre saying 'I can do the same thing, but my way,' putting his Tunnels and Trolls booth up at conventions, and making it work, but we haven't heard of Joe Schmoe and his Caverns and Catoblepas game that he tried to sell during the same era. That said, that era did have it's fair share of abject failures, overly complex games (anyone ever play Aftermath? Whew!), and so on that we do know about.

Likewise, no I don't think the arbitrary complexity is specifically bad about that era. Like I mentioned, Aftermath is from before then and has truly pointless complexity (I remember skills based on character starting age, which is determined with a X+2D3 roll, I believe). But frankly, so are Runequest, Palladium, MERP, and 1e AD&D (which absolutely has arbitrary complexity, we just generally like the complexity it has).  

So my general point is no, there is nothing specifically special about that era, either in terms of its' failures or in their nature. Only in your memory thereof.  

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1010981I don't remember things being the way the OP described. I think there was some wonky GM advice floating around at the time, but the mechanics of the games themselves were fine. Some games were complex but some were fairly straight forward (and 2E was pretty much the same core system as 1E---and the expansion stuff was all optional and more GM centered than the later 3E expansions). And you had some unusual games like TORG. I think in terms of mechanics at least the late 80s and 90s had variety. The early 2000s was the d20 boom. There was other stuff going on, but the shelves were filled with d20 games (which could get pretty complex at times).

2e is not the same as 1e, but there isn't anything about it that is specifically... anything really. Both are could be seen as attempts to make OD&D more fleshed out, for good or ill. But honestly, if the ruleset that is 2e was actually the first one and the ruleset that is 1e had actually come out second and was called second edition, I think everything would be roughly the same (with lots of people fondly remembering the 1e of that universe). 2e, I feel gets a bunch of grief mostly because 1) it was an attempt to "fix" 1e, which a lot of people feel emotional ownership of and resent someone suggesting it needing fixing (despite it being an attempt to "fix" oD&D), and 2) despite 1e listing everything as official and marketing it as required and 2e saying that everything is optional, for some reason all of 1e's bad supplements 'don't count' while 2e as a whole has to take the blame for bad things in Complete Book of Elves or Player's Options books, etc.

As to the wonky GM advice floating around at the time, what specifically are you thinking of?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;10112042e is not the same as 1e, but there isn't anything about it that is specifically... anything really. Both are could be seen as attempts to make OD&D more fleshed out, for good or ill. But honestly, if the ruleset that is 2e was actually the first one and the ruleset that is 1e had actually come out second and was called second edition, I think everything would be roughly the same (with lots of people fondly remembering the 1e of that universe). 2e, I feel gets a bunch of grief mostly because 1) it was an attempt to "fix" 1e, which a lot of people feel emotional ownership of and resent someone suggesting it needing fixing (despite it being an attempt to "fix" oD&D), and 2) despite 1e listing everything as official and marketing it as required and 2e saying that everything is optional, for some reason all of 1e's bad supplements 'don't count' while 2e as a whole has to take the blame for bad things in Complete Book of Elves or Player's Options books, etc.

As to the wonky GM advice floating around at the time, what specifically are you thinking of?

I'd say mechanically, 2E and 1E were pretty close together, particularly compared the difference between those two editions and later editions of the game. Not saying they are identical. There are important differences. But you could easily run a 1E module with 2E (which we did all the time) and you could easily port in things like the Monk to 1E (which again, we did).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1011204That said, that era did have it's fair share of  overly complex games (anyone ever play Aftermath? Whew!), and so on that we do know about.

Likewise, no I don't think the arbitrary complexity is specifically bad about that era. Like I mentioned, Aftermath is from before then and has truly pointless complexity (I remember skills based on character starting age, which is determined with a X+2D3 roll, I believe). But frankly, so are Runequest, Palladium, MERP, and 1e AD&D (which absolutely has arbitrary complexity, we just generally like the complexity it has).  

I remember playing a great deal of Aftermath! and I don't remember the complexity being so much in the actual play as in the set up. Oh, boy was there complexity in the set up. It didn't matter if you were a player or the GM, get out your calculator and prepare to set aside a few hours...  The sad thing is it was not unusal to spend two hours generating a character only to have him walk into a ghoul ambush and die in a firefight five minutes into your first session playing him.

But actual playing, as I remember it, and this may be coloured by experienced GMs or not using all the rules, was no more complex than playing AD&D or RuneQuest.  Both of which games had much faster character generation.

Quote from: S'mon;1011170There were a ton of games that were basically just character generation + combat + task resolution (maybe!), with no answer to "so what do we do?" I rem buying the d20 Fading Suns conversion and it made no attempt at all to advise what the PCs were supposed to be doing.

Of course, shoddy D20 conversions of games were a 2000s problem, not an '80s-'90s problem. The '80s had Stormbringer while the 2000s had Dragon Lords of Melnibone.

It's odd that Itachi is trying to focus in on the late '80s and '90s for complexity, while excluding the early '80s. Space Opera and Aftermath which are the held up as models of extreme complexity are from 1980 and 1981 respectively. The mid to late '80s were when the industry pulled back from that kind of madness.

I also don't see how Ars Magica makes the list either for complexity or opaque goals. From a complexity perspective, Ars Magica's first two edition are no more than moderate crunch today with a unified core mechanic. A good amount of the support material was sandboxy and ready to use in play (although there were a few terrible, railroady adventures too).

I certainly can't see how the game had opaque goals. It was a highly structured game with seasons of research that also depended on occasional adventuring for material to support that research. Not many games have the goals baked that clearly into the system.

Now, Ars Magica 5E, a product of this century, is bristling with complexity and systems piled on systems and a loss of focus on what the game is about.

Quote from: Baulderstone;1011215Of course, shoddy D20 conversions of games were a 2000s problem, not an '80s-'90s problem. The '80s had Stormbringer while the 2000s had Dragon Lords of Melnibone.

The only good thing I can find to say about DLoM is that it brought us some of the nice art from European versions of the game. Otherwise it is the poster child for everything wrong with the d20 fad.

Indeed. I remember a d20 game called "Engel" about a post-judeo-christian-apocalyptic setting or something. It's rules was the d20 SRD as is. It was embarassingly bad.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1011210I remember playing a great deal of Aftermath! and I don't remember the complexity being so much in the actual play as in the set up. Oh, boy was there complexity in the set up. It didn't matter if you were a player or the GM, get out your calculator and prepare to set aside a few hours...  The sad thing is it was not unusal to spend two hours generating a character only to have him walk into a ghoul ambush and die in a firefight five minutes into your first session playing him.

But actual playing, as I remember it, and this may be coloured by experienced GMs or not using all the rules, was no more complex than playing AD&D or RuneQuest.  Both of which games had much faster character generation.

Aftermath wasn't nearly as complex as often portrayed. The funny thing is actually playing the game as written was more complex than just playing it as it made sense. I know a weird statement, and I don't mean ignoring rules we didn't like. We quickly found much of the games supposed complexity was hype that the authors intentionally or unintentionally supported by writing the rules in such a way that they seemed more difficult than they actually were. Things like adding a complicated flow chart. That was one of the first things that went away for us, as there was just no need for it.

Chargen was certainly more involved than the typical roll 3d6 common at the time, but was essentially just an early point buy system and far less complex than that used in HERO or GURPS. The game itself is only marginally more complex than Runequest. My biggest complaint with Aftermath (and many games of the early 80s) was that many of the rules didn't function well outside of a narrow set of  expectations. When you read the designers notes there are numerous examples where they fudged something to make it fit the authors expectations. Rather than go back and fix the issue they just fudged it for that particular example and left it in place. Also a lot of places where it seems the authors started to go somewhere and then just stopped short, I don't know maybe page limitations ofr something.

Aftermath / Daredevils is a really frustrating game system for me as I think with more care the rules could have been very successful, there is a kernel of greatness in there that was unrealized. Far from the only one though The Morrow Project and Tri-Tacs Stalking the Night Fantastic / Fringeworthy / FTL2448 have similar incompleteness to them. These are still some of my favorite games from the period despite their shortcomings.

Quote from: Itachi;1010937... Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? ...

Absolutely! From your persepctive, from a subjective assessment, I wouldn't argue with you.

After a long run with AD&D 2e, I grew weary of level-class-based games. I explored lots of different games after that. I circled back to check out 3e, then took a break, then ran an Eberron 3.5 game, then took a break, then tried 4e and didn't like it, and switched to Pathfinder for a year or so. I've tried various other games inbetween. After a nice long run with GURPS 4e, I took a break to check out some OSR and settled on C&C. I recently jumped in Radiance d20, but in the end I really like the crunchy simulation that GURPS 4e offers.

When I was younger, I tried various Palladium games, MERPS, Rolemaster, GURPS 3e, Kult...  I ran a ton of CP2020. I had a group that adored Alternity. I had a later group convert to HERO 5ER and we played that for years. Dabbled with Shadowrun because I love the setting. I took 2 years out on an indie/narrative exploration that almost caused permanent insanity and loss of hobby skill.

I never had good impressions of Palladium for example. I remember running Kult in any system I could convert it to. I dabbled in Fuzion. I have hated GURPS and loved it. I went on a Savage Worlds kick for a solid run.

It's not about trends or statistics, verifiable design patterns or even scientific data. It's about how you feel about it. I have played a ton of games. Some I liked - some I didn't. I met a bunch of people who felt the opposite and others who joined me in my enthusiasm of the moment.

Having had the pleasure of putting hands on the Alexandria Roleplaying Library (https://www.alexandriarpg.com/), and playing some Palladium Fantasy just for the hell of it, I now see Palladium differently. People like different games for different reasons. You don't even really need to build a consensus on what is "good" or "bad". Just what you like. Hence why there are so many approaches.

Objectively, none of the games you mentioned are "bad". People had fun playing them and running them. In the end, it's really the only useful measuring stick for a recreational hobby. :-D

Quote from: DavetheLost;1011183And yet we did so much more with it than just endless dungeon crawls.  Many of the things we did were not even hinted at in the rules.  Bollocks indeed!

Sure (and the OSR takes D&D all kinds of places (https://engineoforacles.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/ghastly-affair-the-gothic-game-of-romantic-horror/)) - but with D&D there was ALWAYS SOMETHING TO DO - with D&D you never risk being at a loss, because it has well defined & fun default activities, such as dungeon delving. Unlike a lot of RPGs.

Quote from: Itachi;1011187But D&D3/4 are combat-oriented games, no? At least that's the impression I had from the couple games I played and by reading the corebooks. 4e is even explicit about it. Contrast that with, say, Shadowrun, which in theory is a mission/heist game, but in practice the rules make combat more than 50% of it (my god, I remember the endless combat turns with dread).

And that's the problem of those late 80s/90s games in my view. Whatever the central themes or premises supposedly were, combat made up more than half the rules and intended play experience. And this combat was usually envisioned through a physics simulation lens that most of times had nothing to do with those initial premises. You had some exceptions like Over the Edge and Everway, sure, but those were exceptions.

I agree about the inappropriate dominance of the combat system in many, many games.

4e D&D is definitely a combat centric game. 3e I think can support other play styles, but the XP system, the CR system, & the published adventures all tend to encourage endless combat.

Quote from: S'mon;1011285I agree about the inappropriate dominance of the combat system in many, many games.

4e D&D is definitely a combat centric game. 3e I think can support other play styles, but the XP system, the CR system, & the published adventures all tend to encourage endless combat.

Based on the responses I've seen on gaming forums over the years, I get the feeling combat is one of the few areas the majority of players are comfortable with the dice deciding much of the action. The result being that many games look as though they support combat solutions for everything when in fact they are just designed that way under an assumption that outside of combat the GM will arbitrate results based on the players description of their actions.
Even when skills are included, other than a potentially sizable list of skills most skill systems don't require a great deal of room for explanation, most just being a pass / fail or Save vs kind of thing.

Quote from: S'mon;1011285I agree about the inappropriate dominance of the combat system in many, many games.

I doubt it's a fault of any particular era, but Kult (in whatever edition I have) has waaaaay more gun-porn than I need or want... and, IMO, it doesn't fit with the themes of the game. I'd be fine with something far less detailed.
Some Call of Cthulhu books have gone the same way... getting all wrapped up in details of various weapons, mostly guns.
But I've felt free to ignore this... have much more generalized weapon stats... and most of the folks I've played with haven't complained when I mix up 'clip' for 'magazine'.

I agree about the gun porn in both games. It seems strange.  Our group weren't gun bunnies so we ignored it for the most part.

I think people replicated it in the past simply because it was the tradition or something. These days I think authors have more tools at their disposal, and are more aware of this fact.

Authors added dozens and dozens of guns to Call of Cthulhu via various articles and supplements because some players are interested in the details of historical (or modern) firearms. But those are all supplementary materials. There is no requirement to acquire or use any of it and little expectation that one should do so.

For players who like it I'm all for it. I loved the RQ3 armour system because it let me play mix and match with all sorts of armour types. Bezainted, jazeriant, plate, chain, so much more than usual D&D. And who could forget all the pole arms in AD&D 1e. We spent quite a bit of time looking up what all of them were. I still remember such gems as the "Bohemian Ear-spoon".

Kult and CoC just weren't gun heavy games for us  Top Secret on the other hand...

Quote from: S'mon;10112853e I think can support other play styles, but the XP system, the CR system, & the published adventures all tend to encourage endless combat.

The original CR system of 3e was set up for players to take on challenges, they weren't meant to be solely combat - although those ended up being the easiest to do with 3e.

Quote from: Bren;1011298Authors added dozens and dozens of guns to Call of Cthulhu via various articles and supplements because some players are interested in the details of historical (or modern) firearms. But those are all supplementary materials. There is no requirement to acquire or use any of it and little expectation that one should do so.

I don't have the most recent edition, but generally as I recall the default in CoC is generic 9mm handgun, magnum revolver etc with the more specific stats being found in supplements like the Investigators Guide and such. Also the focus of these supplements are not usually nearly as gun focused as some other games also including various period correct equipment like carbide lamps, large format cameras, and short essays on period forensics etc. You know the kind of stuff players may take for granted, like for millennials explaining how people lived without cell phones and the interwebs. :p  

There are certainly games that do have a major emphasis on weapons, but I've never really thought of CoC as one of them.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1011316There are certainly games that do have a major emphasis on weapons, but I've never really thought of CoC as one of them.

Naw, I wasn't saying the game itself was gun heavy... just that there were some later day sourcebooks for it that seemed to focus more heavily on guns than I'd ever have thought necessary. Like I said, I felt free to ignore that.
Of the two, Kult was the one that had more focus on guns in its corebook... which still seemed off-theme, IMO.

Saying the decade between 1980 and 1990 produced the worst games ever is like saying the decade between 1920 and 1930 produced the worst films ever.

The RPG industry had been around for a whopping -6- years by 1980. If it was a human person, it was just starting to really learn to read. People were just starting to figure out what could be done with these games, and sure there were many terrible games in this period, but many we rightfully recognize as classics, or extremely influential today.

Quote from: Simlasa;1011319Naw, I wasn't saying the game itself was gun heavy... just that there were some later day sourcebooks for it that seemed to focus more heavily on guns than I'd ever have thought necessary. Like I said, I felt free to ignore that.
Of the two, Kult was the one that had more focus on guns in its corebook... which still seemed off-theme, IMO.

Endless charts of guns and weapons in horror RPGs have long struck me as odd. The last few times I ran Call of Cthulhu, I used this simple system instead:

Hand weapons:
Small -- 1D4
Medium -- 1D6
Large -- 1D8

Guns:
Pistol -- 1D8
Rifle -- 1D10
Shotgun -- 1D12, and drops to 1D8 at long range

Anything more grainy than that is just wasted.

Of course, I also admit that I've pretty much given up on BRP games in general, because of the new management at Chaosium leaving a bad taste in my mouth, but that's a topic for another day.

To quote Forrest Brown of FASA:  "Guns sell.  Big guns sell more."

That's why the proliferation of gun stats.

It's not only gun/combat-porn, there was this necessity to cover any possibility available for the human anatomy. Shadowrun (still) have precise explanations for treading water, and a detailed diagram for resolving the scatter of a grenade in 6 or 8 directions.

I don't know how much this affects the reality, let alone peoples' perception of it, but wasn't the publishing industry in general going through major unrest in the late 80's, early 90's?  Books of all kinds were wildly inflated in production cost and thus MSRP, and the digital stuff was still having its issues resolved.  It certainly affected fantasy novels.  If you are going to charge $5.95 for a book instead of $3.35, the way to get it to sell is to make it thicker.  I suspect that a well-crafted, 32 or 64 page, high quality rule set with quality binding and paper was not the most economically promising option for a game publisher.

Would one of the Red Box D&D sets have been economically feasible in, say, 1989, if you delayed the game development by a decade or so?

Quote from: Itachi;1011381It's not only gun/combat-porn, there was this necessity to cover any possibility available for the human anatomy. Shadowrun (still) have precise explanations for treading water, and a detailed diagram for resolving the scatter of a grenade in 6 or 8 directions.

Obviously essential in a game about playing a Cyberpunk Elf.

Quote from: Herne's Son;1011321Saying the decade between 1980 and 1990 produced the worst games ever is like saying the decade between 1920 and 1930 produced the worst films ever.

The RPG industry had been around for a whopping -6- years by 1980. If it was a human person, it was just starting to really learn to read. People were just starting to figure out what could be done with these games, and sure there were many terrible games in this period, but many we rightfully recognize as classics, or extremely influential today.

A poor comparison as the films of the 20s are better made than the average film today but that's OT.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1011316I recall the default in CoC is generic 9mm handgun, magnum revolver etc with the more specific stats being found in supplements like the Investigators Guide and such.

That's more or less what I've seen as well. There are a couple of articles in the Unspeakable Oath, one for pistols and one for long arms, each of which listed 50+ models of firearms including various common models as well as rare, unusual, and even possibly apocryphal weapons like the US Civil War era Lamatt revolver/shotgun combo, the duck foot flintlock pistol, and dragonsbreath incendiary-effect shotgun shells. I think those articles then served as the genesis for a single supplement that gathered the firearms material into a single source book. That's a lot of weapons total, but given the sheer number of CoC the page count covering weapons is a relatively small fraction of the total published page count.

Quote from: Simlasa;1011319Naw, I wasn't saying the game itself was gun heavy... just that there were some later day sourcebooks for it that seemed to focus more heavily on guns than I'd ever have thought necessary.

My feeling was that some folks who played a lot of CoC wanted an occasional change of pace where guns featured heavily, some folks wanted a scenario or two with Mythos horror in the trenches of the Great War or the deserts of Arabia which necessitated some specificity in weapon types, and there are always some folks who want to punch Cthulhu in the face (metaphorically speaking) by using weapons. There are certainly a few stories by Lovecraft and more than a few by one of his imitators/emulators where weapons have a prominent place. All of which is easy to add in or leave out based on the tastes of the folks at the table.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1011325To quote Forrest Brown of FASA:  "Guns sell.  Big guns sell more."

That's why the proliferation of gun stats.

And of course this too.

Quote from: Bren;1011526My feeling was that some folks who played a lot of CoC wanted an occasional change of pace where guns featured heavily, some folks wanted a scenario or two with Mythos horror in the trenches of the Great War or the deserts of Arabia which necessitated some specificity in weapon types, and there are always some folks who want to punch Cthulhu in the face (metaphorically speaking) by using weapons. There are certainly a few stories by Lovecraft and more than a few by one of his imitators/emulators where weapons have a prominent place. All of which is easy to add in or leave out based on the tastes of the folks at the table.

I can't speak for others but I personally prefer a mix of traditional horrors, vampires, ghosts, ghouls and just good old fashioned evil wack jobs (cultists, serial killers, occult obsessed proto nazis etc) with the occasional mythos horror mixed in. Kind of like a pulpy X files with monster of the week mixed in with the larger conspiracy, substituting mythos for the alien conspiracy.

The Shunned House is my go to story when dealing with the argument that resorting to violence is against the premise of CoC. The "PCs" in the story outfitted themselves with vats of acid, poison gas, a couple of flame throwers and a "death ray" of sorts to investigate the mystery at the center of the story.

Violence typically isn't useful against the main baddies, but it does work against a lot of the minions. In the words of Jack Burton, "Hey, you never know until you try". ;)

Quote from: Voros;1011473A poor comparison as the films of the 20s are better made than the average film today but that's OT.

90% of films made before 1932 have been lost, so your own comparison is poor.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1011533The Shunned House is my go to story when dealing with the argument that resorting to violence is against the premise of CoC. The "PCs" in the story outfitted themselves with vats of acid, poison gas, a couple of flame throwers and a "death ray" of sorts to investigate the mystery at the center of the story.

Violence typically isn't useful against the main baddies, but it does work against a lot of the minions. In the words of Jack Burton, "Hey, you never know until you try". ;)

CF also The Call of CThulhu, The Horror at Red Hook, The Shadow Over Innsmouth to name just three HPL stories that rate pretty high on the shoot-it-in-the-face scale.

Quote from: Baulderstone;101153590% of films made before 1932 have been lost, so your own comparison is poor.

Fair enough but you can compare the best to the best then. But it is a poor comparison as the films of that period are hardly more convoluted and clumsy than modern films.

Quote from: Voros;1011551Fair enough but you can compare the best to the best then. But it is a poor comparison as the films of that period are hardly more convoluted and clumsy than modern films.

It is a flawed premise, all that has been demonstrated is that the OP doesn't like a gaming style that was prevalent in the period. It is essentially like saying the 1940s made the worst movies based on the fact you hate the noir style popular at that time.

To draw another probably flawed comparison, it is kinda odd how quickly RPGs tended towards (over)complexity as the early development of video games didn't reflect that, early on video games were perhaps 'primitive' but also simple and the best perhaps even the dreaded term elegant.

But then video games and films also develop in close tandem with technology which is less true with TTRPGs.

But then by the mid-80s you do start to see lighter rulesets like Ghostbusters, which also inspired Risus. It did take longer than one would expect for such a system to appear though, unless you count TT and CoC as relatively ruleslight.

OD&D was rules light.  In full size pages, it would have been something like 58 pages, and that included naval combat, aerial combat, and castle building.

T&T was also extremely rules light.. The core rules remained light enough to pack into a (small) paperback along with an adventure. Corgi did quite a number this way with rules and two adventures. The first version of T&T was out within a year of D&D.

Metamorphosis Alpha packed an entire game, plus a full setting into 32 pages, in 1976.

I wouldn't call 1977 Traveller compex or rules heavey either. We managed it just fine as high school kids.

Yep, OD&D may be considered rules light too, what corroborates Voros idea of industries starting simple. I remember playing Atari's Adventure as a kid and feeling the sense of wonder exploring the castle like that, even if you were basically an ugly pixel on the screen.

Page count/production value for early game booklets and memory for early computer games were constraining factors. The required people to be judicious with their designs. Once book space and memory space increase, it allowed (but did not necessitate) people being lazy or sloppy or just allowing bad designs to come to fruition (mind you, there was plenty of elegant garbage in both early TTRPG and computer game history).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1011559OD&D was rules light.  In full size pages, it would have been something like 58 pages, and that included naval combat, aerial combat, and castle building.

Page count doesn't correspond to rules-light. It corresponds to rules length. There are some short yet convoluted games out there.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1011557It is a flawed premise, all that has been demonstrated is that the OP doesn't like a gaming style that was prevalent in the period. It is essentially like saying the 1940s made the worst movies based on the fact you hate the noir style popular at that time.

Can we close the thread now?

Quote from: Dumarest;1011728Page count doesn't correspond to rules-light. It corresponds to rules length. There are some short yet convoluted games out there.

Honest question:  Do you have any examples?  I'm curious.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1011738Honest question:  Do you have any examples?  I'm curious.

Just off the top of my head Villains & Vigilantes and Champions (1st and 2nd editions) were brief but complicated and messy sets of rules.

Quote from: Voros;1011558To draw another probably flawed comparison, it is kinda odd how quickly RPGs tended towards (over)complexity as the early development of video games didn't reflect that, early on video games were perhaps 'primitive' but also simple and the best perhaps even the dreaded term elegant.

But then video games and films also develop in close tandem with technology which is less true with TTRPGs.

But then by the mid-80s you do start to see lighter rulesets like Ghostbusters, which also inspired Risus. It did take longer than one would expect for such a system to appear though, unless you count TT and CoC as relatively ruleslight.

Toon should be mentioned in there as well.

Quote from: Baulderstone;1011748Toon should be mentioned in there as well.

As well as TSR's Conan, Indiana Jones, and Marvel Super Heroes games. All very light and fast rules sets.

The worst game ever is your favorite game.
Unless it's my favorite game, but in that case, you are playing it wrong.

Quote from: Dumarest;1011743Just off the top of my head Villains & Vigilantes and Champions (1st and 2nd editions) were brief but complicated and messy sets of rules.

I got the same impression from Daredevils - early 1980s games tended be short on page count but often still convoluted.

Quote from: Dumarest;1011764As well as TSR's Conan, Indiana Jones, and Marvel Super Heroes games. All very light and fast rules sets.

Agree with Toon and Marvel Super Heroes. Both are favourites of mine to this day. Have yet to find Conan or IJ although I don't doubt that they were probably rules light as well. Toon and MSH came out in 1984, GB in 1986. Obviously a trend and perhaps a reaction to AD&D and other increasingly complicated systems.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1011557It is a flawed premise, all that has been demonstrated is that the OP doesn't like a gaming style that was prevalent in the period. It is essentially like saying the 1940s made the worst movies based on the fact you hate the noir style popular at that time.

It's not about styles, it's about doing what it says on the tin with coherence. I like Film Noir, I don't like War Documentary selling itself as Film Noir.

Quote from: Dumarest;1011764As well as TSR's Conan, Indiana Jones, and Marvel Super Heroes games. All very light and fast rules sets.

Good call on Indiana Jones. It's been so long since I ran it that I can remember the mechanics in any specific way, but that game played really well at the time.

Quote from: Itachi;1011802It's not about styles, it's about doing what it says on the tin with coherence. I like Film Noir, I don't like War Documentary selling itself as Film Noir.

There is plenty incoherency in design today as well. Star Trek Adventures is supposedly a game of adventure in a post-scarcity society. In reality, it's a complex game of carefully managing a wide range game resources to modify dice pools and apply modifiers.

Yep, agreed. The difference to me is that, back in mid 80s--mid 90s, it was the dominating trend.

Quote from: Itachi;1011807Yep, agreed. The difference to me is that, back in mid 80s--mid 90s, it was the dominating trend.

I don't think that "dominating trend" meant all that much in the '80s to mid-90s. We didn't have Internet hive minds. We just had our personal groups and the games those groups played. Once you get outside of D&D, which hadn't changed notably since the late '70s at that point, the games any group were playing varied a lot.

Quote from: Itachi;1011807Yep, agreed. The difference to me is that, back in mid 80s--mid 90s, it was the dominating trend.

What was the dominating trend?

Does anyone know of any good Toon actual plays? I never got to play that game and I'm curious as to how it played.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1011559OD&D was rules light.  In full size pages, it would have been something like 58 pages, and that included naval combat, aerial combat, and castle building.

0D&D is an interesting case. By Supplement One it had started down the path of many, many submechanisms for resolving various in game tasks. Some were a d20 roll high, others were d% roll low, a few were d6 roll low, damage was cool dX roll high. In some ways this plethora is subsystems and dice types is not ahat I would call "rule light", but in other ways the rules were succinct and not over burdened with options and modifiers.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1011861Does anyone know of any good Toon actual plays? I never got to play that game and I'm curious as to how it played.

I don't know of any written actual plays for Toon, but I have run it many times.  I enjoy it immensely with the right players--those being for me, anyone that agrees that the collected Warner Brothers cartoons that were on constant rerun in the 70s are the pinnacle of the medium. :)  Toon is supposed to be broader than that, but it really shines when you are recreating the antics of Bugs, Daffy, Sylvester, and the gang--even if you make your own characters imitating some other favorite cartoon.  It's best played in concentrated bursts.  To it's credit, that's the way it is presented and structured.

I also think that hacking the rules for Toon would make a great basis for playing 70's style buddy-cop shows.  For much the same reasons as above.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1011838What was the dominating trend?

Stuff he didn't like.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1011838What was the dominating trend?

Playing a heist game with rules to tread water. :D

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;1011861Does anyone know of any good Toon actual plays? I never got to play that game and I'm curious as to how it played.

It plays great, fast, and loose provided the ref and players are sharp and funny people. Otherwise it will drag whenever you get to the guy who wants to consider his next move and apply normal RPG thinking to Toon.

There are  a  couple of pretty good YouTubes of some guys playing the Floogle adventure. Just Google it or search on YouTube.

Edit: https://youtu.be/jVmA8RA8pBU

Quote from: Baulderstone;1011805Good call on Indiana Jones. It's been so long since I ran it that I can remember the mechanics in any specific way, but that game played really well at the time.

Haven't played in a long while mainly because I haven't been able to recruit anyone interested in it, but luckily I still have pretty much all my old boxed games from that era if anyone ever volunteers.

Interesting to see people actually played and liked Indiana Jones and Conan. At some point I've owned both and after reading thought, this is a game?

I've always thought they were just bad as I've never heard of anyone liking them and they didn't stick around for long. Toon I knew had some success although I was always mystified as to why.

Back in those days I wasn't aware of a thing called rules light. Some games had lots of rules, some had less. Those I wondered where the rules were.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1011989Interesting to see people actually played and liked Indiana Jones and Conan. At some point I've owned both and after reading thought, this is a game?

I've always thought they were just bad as I've never heard of anyone liking them and they didn't stick around for long. Toon I knew had some success although I was always mystified as to why.

Back in those days I wasn't aware of a thing called rules light. Some games had lots of rules, some had less. Those I wondered where the rules were.

Well, I am an outlier and skew the polls because I've played AD&D or Basic D&D all of maybe 5 times in the past 14 years and have no particular interest in doing so ever again, but have played numerous unpopular games such as Flashing Blades, Ghostbusters, Toon, and Boot Hill instead. Plus Traveller, which I think is still popular.

I spent much of the last thirty years playing stuff like Blue Planet, Metamorphosis Alpha, Tribe 8, Whispering Vault, Kult, and T&T.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1012012I spent much of the last thirty years playing stuff like Blue Planet, Metamorphosis Alpha, Tribe 8, Whispering Vault, Kult, and T&T.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1999[/ATTACH]

Quote from: Dumarest;1011743Just off the top of my head Villains & Vigilantes and Champions (1st and 2nd editions) were brief but complicated and messy sets of rules.

I see.  I never played these two games back then, my introduction to 'Champions' was HERO 4th.  Thanks!

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1011205I'd say mechanically, 2E and 1E were pretty close together, particularly compared the difference between those two editions and later editions of the game. Not saying they are identical. There are important differences. But you could easily run a 1E module with 2E (which we did all the time) and you could easily port in things like the Monk to 1E (which again, we did).

Yep, anyone who trots out the "long list of vast differences" should be subject to laughing long and hardy at their expense.

It's so simple to use 1st edition stuff for 2nd. My preferred is 2nd with a late 1st edition feel (no kits, no PO). Plays very well with the morass of problems of 1st.

Vampire The Masquerade came out in the 90s, and it was pretty good for the first nine years or so of its existence until Justin Achilli ruined the game with Revised Edition back in 1999.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1011989Interesting to see people actually played and liked Indiana Jones and Conan. At some point I've owned both and after reading thought, this is a game?

The major issue people had with IJ was the lack of character generation in the core book, and that was fixed by the Judge's Survival Kit which also made the good chase rules even better. I'd say the character generation issues was the main reason the game flopped.

It was stunningly ahead of its time in a lot of ways. Chase/action scenes in that game were fun in a way that I wouldn't see again until D6 Star Wars.

This game also seems to get hit with a lot complaints that flat out aren't true. It rare to see a discussion of it without someone making spurious complaints about it. The Wikipedia page on it seems entirely built of these kind of complaints.

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it says, "No formal system of hit points or determining actual character death is put forth, and instead is left to the referee as a role-play element."

The game is pretty clear: four serious wounds and you are dead. Maybe the guy who wrote it was too thick to understand a system of accumulating wounds rather than one with decreasing HP.

I remember after running Indiana Jones for a while, we tried Palladium's Road Hogs, and going from the zippy, fun vehicular chase rules in IJ to the joyless, three hour slog of RH vehicular combat was so painful.

Quote from: Willmark;1012109Yep, anyone who trots out the "long list of vast differences" should be subject to laughing long and hardy at their expense.

It's so simple to use 1st edition stuff for 2nd. My preferred is 2nd with a late 1st edition feel (no kits, no PO). Plays very well with the morass of problems of 1st.

Nobody in my gaming group picked up 2E precisely because none of us could justify buying the core books on our limited teenage budgets. It still seemed to be the same game we already had.

Quote from: Itachi;1011169Well remembered. Coincidently, I think this dark age of adventure design covered the exact period I mentioned in the OP, from mid/late 80s to late 90s. I remember some Dragonlance and Shadowrun advice where the GM is instructed to not let players deviate from the plot, and if the players insist, then "stop the game and ha e a conversation" with them.

You and I remember Shadowrun 1st ed verrrry differently. Maybe if you were dumb enough to run a module but that would be true for all games using a module.

Quote from: Voros;1011472Obviously essential in a game about playing a Cyberpunk Elf.

You'd be surprised.

Quote from: Doc Sammy;1012144Vampire The Masquerade came out in the 90s, and it was pretty good for the first nine years or so of its existence until Justin Achilli ruined the game with Revised Edition back in 1999.

Not going to enter an edition war argument, but for accuracy's sake Vampire: The Masquerade 1st edition came out in 1991, second edition 1992 and the Revised edition 1998. It was, arguably, the most significant RPG of the 1990s, along with the rest of the World of Darkness line.

It has attracted criticism over the years for it's design, although when it came out in the early 1990s it was considered novel for things like picking dots-on-the-character sheet, Jungian personality mechanics and the avenues towards live action play. The actual design parameters reflected the attitude of the time that game rules and systems were secondary to setting and content - something that can be jarring to gamers from later generations who are conditioned to the notion that "system matters". The mantra in the early 1990s was that system didn't matter and should essentially be so simple and unobtrusive as to fade into the background. The most prominent design feature of the World of Darkness was the use of 'splats' to create groups of affiliation and build up some complex political overtures in the games setting, while the general layout and presentation of the books were a step up in style to what had come before in RPGs.

Over the years, where White Wolf were publishing some 50+ World of Darkness books per year, the rules and setting became increasingly complex and messy. The success of the line also brought in other pressures in order to maintain the business - hence the Revised line (essentially third editions in all but name) began in the late 90s, which in turn led to problems of edition wars and the like. The ebb and flow of the game's publishing seemed to go on six-or-so-year cycles - which accounts for the 'ending' of the original World of Darkness in 2004, to be replaced by the 'New' World of Darkness which meant there was less friction with previous editions so less edition wars, theoretically. In 2011, we then got 20th Anniversary editions (actually the 4th edition in all but name). Now we are getting a 5th edition in 2018. The cycle goes on.

I don't agree with the premise of the OP, that game design was particularly bad in the late 1980s/1990s. Some of the best RPGs ever were designed in this period. However, there were some ingrained conventions (like big skill lists, for example) that were just lazy trends at the time - and these things were often just coalesced into games over resultant new editions being made (the original Vampire in it's 1st edition being less than half the page count of the 20th Anniversary, for example). Then again, I don't see that the tendency to simply copy other game designs in the design of new games has really changed today - its just different conventions being copied. Hence we have copious numbers of Apocalypse World or Fate style games now instead of BRP or Champions style games.

With the exception of D20/3e, there were a lot of way better games being made in the early 90s than the indie (and some non-indie) garbage that was being made in the early 2000s.

Quote from: Baulderstone;1012169The major issue people had with IJ was the lack of character generation in the core book, and that was fixed by the Judge's Survival Kit which also made the good chase rules even better. I'd say the character generation issues was the main reason the game flopped.

It was stunningly ahead of its time in a lot of ways. Chase/action scenes in that game were fun in a way that I wouldn't see again until D6 Star Wars.

This game also seems to get hit with a lot complaints that flat out aren't true. It rare to see a discussion of it without someone making spurious complaints about it. The Wikipedia page on it seems entirely built of these kind of complaints.

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it says, "No formal system of hit points or determining actual character death is put forth, and instead is left to the referee as a role-play element."

The game is pretty clear: four serious wounds and you are dead. Maybe the guy who wrote it was too thick to understand a system of accumulating wounds rather than one with decreasing HP.

I remember after running Indiana Jones for a while, we tried Palladium's Road Hogs, and going from the zippy, fun vehicular chase rules in IJ to the joyless, three hour slog of RH vehicular combat was so painful.



Nobody in my gaming group picked up 2E precisely because none of us could justify buying the core books on our limited teenage budgets. It still seemed to be the same game we already had.

At the time TSRs Conan RPG and Indiana Jones just seemed like cheap opportunistic crap. Keep in mind in the mid 1980s I was hardcore into crunch, Aftermath, HERO, GURPS, Phoenix Command, so some licensed games resembling pamphlets probably had no chance of winning me over.

I initially didn't even like Danger Internationals abstract chase rules at the time (coming off of detail heavy Carwars), although after giving them a chance they grew on me, and today I think they are a pretty solid set of rules. HERO would have done well to keep them in later editions instead of the cludgy vehicles are just like PCs map based rules they have used since 4th ed.

Bit of a side track, but there was an interesting Steve Jackson / HERO collaboration in the 1980s, Autoduel Champions. It had the best vehicle rules for HERO and in my opinion did a better job of combining Carwars with a full RPG than GURPS Autoduel did a few years later.  


It appears that TSR did both a Conan game as well as Conan D&D modules. I may have only seen the modules and reading reviews of them, they sound pretty bad and railroady. It also explains my thinking TSR did 2 Conan games, and hearing that the second one was better (that being the actual Conan game, not the D&D modules).

Quote from: Itachi;1010937AD&D 2nd edition. Twilight 2000. Rifts. Ars Magica. Shadowrun. Kult. Deadlands. World of Synnibar, Cyborg Commando, etc.

All games from late 80s to mid 90s. All games where complexity for complexity's sake, slow gameplay, and opaque goals were the norm. Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? Specially in contrast to the periods that came immediately before (70s-80s) and after (2000s-now) ? Can someone positively constrast those rules to the kinds of, say... Runequest and OD&D, or the recent entries of OSR and PbtA?

No, I think it sounds like you are asking people to agree with you that complexity is bad, and goals are important for an RPG system.

Ars Magica is interesting because it offers solid rules for interesting and different types of play. I'd prefer to play that to D&D, not to mention PbtA.

And I still prefer GURPS (1986) for most things.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1012032I see.  I never played these two games back then, my introduction to 'Champions' was HERO 4th.  Thanks!

I bought 1st ed Champions when it came out. We had fun making characters but I never really played it. The game seemed interesting but the supers thing never really did much for me. I really got into HERO a few years later with the 3rd ed when they were doing stuff other than Supers, so Fantasy HERO, Danger International and Justice Inc.

I couldn't say for sure 1st was a mess, but you go 1st to 3rd ed in 3-4 years? Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if there were some issues with the early rule sets. Of course 1,2,3rd ed were more additive rather than rewrites of the rules, being done in the form of Champions (1981), then Champions 2 (1982) which brought in 2nd ed, and the Champions 3 (1984) which led to 3rd ed. Espionage (1983) was the first and only non-supers game based on the pre-3rd ed HERO. Third edition properly started with a new Champions game (3rd ed) which absorbed the rules added in Champions 2 and 3, 3rd Ed Champions and and Justice Inc (pulp) came out in 1984, followed by Danger International and Fantasy Hero in 1985. Fourth edition Champions came along in 1989, and the HERO core rules marketed as a generic system came out the following year.

3rd ed was pretty solid but was a house system and not 100% compatible across the lines (but pretty close, mostly differing point values, or damage levels). It wasn't until 4th ed that the idea you had to build "everything" started to be a thing, the heroic 3rd ed games had quite a few abilities that you just bought, no worrying about exactly how it was built.

I think the real loss with 4th ed was that it was the beginning of the idea you had to build things the same way across genres, and that idea got reinforced with 5th ed. One of the neat things about the game in the early years was it encouraged building things differently to fit the genre. An anti-tank missile for Danger International would turn most supers in Champions into a fine mist, while one built for Champions was rather anemic (they are super heroes and supposed to be able to survive being hit by a missile).

Quote from: Toadmaster;1013470At the time TSRs Conan RPG and Indiana Jones just seemed like cheap opportunistic crap. Keep in mind in the mid 1980s I was hardcore into crunch, Aftermath, HERO, GURPS, Phoenix Command, so some licensed games resembling pamphlets probably had no chance of winning me over.

I initially didn't even like Danger Internationals abstract chase rules at the time (coming off of detail heavy Carwars), although after giving them a chance they grew on me, and today I think they are a pretty solid set of rules. HERO would have done well to keep them in later editions instead of the cludgy vehicles are just like PCs map based rules they have used since 4th ed.

Yeah, based on what you were into at the time, Indiana Jones was not the game for you.

 

QuoteIt appears that TSR did both a Conan game as well as Conan D&D modules. I may have only seen the modules and reading reviews of them, they sound pretty bad and railroady. It also explains my thinking TSR did 2 Conan games, and hearing that the second one was better (that being the actual Conan game, not the D&D modules).

I never looked at the TSR Conan stuff. At the time, I liked the movie, but I hadn't actually read any Howard yet, so true appreciation of the character and setting hadn't developed yet.

Looking back, I suppose the IJ adventures were pretty railroady too. It didn't bother us at the time. I think pulp McGuffin quests probably work better just going in a straight line than the adventures of a wandering barbarian.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1013500I bought 1st ed Champions when it came out. We had fun making characters but I never really played it. The game seemed interesting but the supers thing never really did much for me. I really got into HERO a few years later with the 3rd ed when they were doing stuff other than Supers, so Fantasy HERO, Danger International and Justice Inc...

For Fantasy Hero, 1E was OK but flakey.  It was built on the Champions 3E model, but not nearly so clear.  In fact, if we weren't already playing Champions, I might have had trouble getting the campaign off the ground.  We were already discussing a Champions hack for fantasy when FH was released.  FH 4E fixed a lot of problems with the fantasy side.  But as you say, it also introduced some.  At the time, though it wasn't so bad.  Everyone we knew had started with Champions 3E, and thus had the basics already.  So we felt fine picking and choosing stuff from 4E, and treated it like the toolkit it was.  As the starting place for an introduction to Hero, 4E left a lot to be desired.

It was still better than 5E or 6E, though.  Steve Long's ability to pick exactly the wrong things to break rules on and exactly the wrong things to be a stickler to the design, is amazing in its consistency.  Hero is, at heart, a much simpler system than GURPs.  If the same team that produced GURPs 3E were charged with producing a clean version of Hero, it would be amazing.

OK, here it goes.

Spell components.

95% of them are nonsense and unnecessary, only adding to the heap of tracking scrap & junk in your char sheet.
Mind you, I have no idea how most systems handle this, only D&D, and I don't know D&D 5th Edition yet.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1013535For Fantasy Hero, 1E was OK but flakey.  It was built on the Champions 3E model, but not nearly so clear.  In fact, if we weren't already playing Champions, I might have had trouble getting the campaign off the ground.  We were already discussing a Champions hack for fantasy when FH was released.  FH 4E fixed a lot of problems with the fantasy side.  But as you say, it also introduced some.  At the time, though it wasn't so bad.  Everyone we knew had started with Champions 3E, and thus had the basics already.  So we felt fine picking and choosing stuff from 4E, and treated it like the toolkit it was.  As the starting place for an introduction to Hero, 4E left a lot to be desired.

It was still better than 5E or 6E, though.  Steve Long's ability to pick exactly the wrong things to break rules on and exactly the wrong things to be a stickler to the design, is amazing in its consistency.  Hero is, at heart, a much simpler system than GURPs.  If the same team that produced GURPs 3E were charged with producing a clean version of Hero, it would be amazing.

I do agree that 4th was probably the best set of HERO rules, my only real complaint being due to 4th being a generic game and by default making things transfer from genre to genre without need to adjustment. My perfect set of HERO rules would probably be more of a 3.75 edition. :)

Steve Long did a lot for the game, but making it appear less complex was not one of those things. I've often thought he might have preferred GURPS but HERO was for sale, GURPS wasn't.

It would be interesting to see a version of HERO made with an eye to reduce the apparent complexity without gutting it. HERO is actually a fairly simple game at the core, it is the tool box aspect and  Supers foundation that really makes it seem so complex. That is where I think the 3rd ed non-supers games really stood out. There was no need for players to look behind the curtain to see the guts of the game, but the guts were available in the form of Champions if one wanted access to them.

A Hero 3.75 sounds great to me.  I might play that again.  

Quote from: Toadmaster;1013557It would be interesting to see a version of HERO made with an eye to reduce the apparent complexity without gutting it. HERO is actually a fairly simple game at the core, it is the tool box aspect and  Supers foundation that really makes it seem so complex. That is where I think the 3rd ed non-supers games really stood out. There was no need for players to look behind the curtain to see the guts of the game, but the guts were available in the form of Champions if one wanted access to them.

Bar having 3.75, my next choice would be Steve Long being charged to do a 6.1 design, with as few exceptions as he can possibly manage, and all of those documented.  Then someone like the GURPs team presents a subset of it. :)  Best of both worlds. You get a complete, consistent underlying model, but the individual genre books are only the subsets/widgets useful for that book.

I think that is kind of what they tried to do with the various Hero 6 "Complete" books, but the problems are their funding, and then the mindset that goes with working in the Hero line since 4E. They know intellectually that they need to simplify things for presentation, but their hearts aren't in it.  I sympathize even while not preferring the output.    I don't blame Steve Long for that.  If he hadn't done what he did, it might be a dead game.  Cutting my interest was a side effect of what they did, though.

I picked up a bunch of HERO 6e in print and PDF. I thought the changes made the game less likely to be abused in char gen. I liked what I was reading. I had the benefit of having not played HERO for some time (the last version I did play was 5er).

I actually liked the changes in HERO 6th edition but I only had the Basic book.

Quote from: joriandrake;1013543OK, here it goes.

Spell components.

95% of them are nonsense and unnecessary, only adding to the heap of tracking scrap & junk in your char sheet.
Mind you, I have no idea how most systems handle this, only D&D, and I don't know D&D 5th Edition yet.

Quote from: Player's Basic Rules, D&D 5th EditionCasting some spells requires particular objects, specified in parentheses in the component entry. A character can use a component pouch or a spellcasting focus (found in chapter 5) in place of the components specified for a spell. But if a cost is indicated for a component, a character must have that specific component before he or she can cast the spell.

If a spell states that a material component is consumed by the spell, the caster must provide this component for each casting of the spell.

Where the material component has a cost and is consumed, it is not uncommon to simply mark off the cost without the complication of purchasing or making the exact component.

Quote from: trechriron;1013615I picked up a bunch of HERO 6e in print and PDF. I thought the changes made the game less likely to be abused in char gen. I liked what I was reading. I had the benefit of having not played HERO for some time (the last version I did play was 5er).

Quote from: David Johansen;1013627I actually liked the changes in HERO 6th edition but I only had the Basic book.

Heretics



:p

Quote from: David Johansen;1013627I actually liked the changes in HERO 6th edition but I only had the Basic book.

If the 6E contents had been the 5E contents, I might have kept at it a little longer.  I could have made my subset of the rules, like I always had, and kept going.  But by then, I had Hero fatigue.  6E was too little, too late for my purposes.  I've got it, but I doubt I'll ever use it.

Quote from: trechriron;1013615I picked up a bunch of HERO 6e in print and PDF. I thought the changes made the game less likely to be abused in char gen. I liked what I was reading. I had the benefit of having not played HERO for some time (the last version I did play was 5er).

You're right. The ruleset is such that it is harder to game the point-buy system. You can't buy the optimal Dex for the optimal speed per point or the like. But... and this is the problem with making balance be your primary goal*, is that you can just shift your optimization game to taking limitations which you know your GM will never bring up, or make your powers attack versus defenses you know your GM won't put on his opponents very often (and when he does, they won't likely also have the defense vs your backup plan). Unbalanced games aren't such a trivial issue that I think one shouldn't work to minimize them when designing a game, but abuse starts at the knowing-your-GM level and preventing abuse starts at the managing-your-players level.
*aside from the fact that game balance, while nice, just isn't people's primary goal. 4e D&D made this mistake as well.

I tend to agree that 6e would have been a perfectly fine game if 5e hadn't come out and been 90% of the way in that direction. It also didn't help that complexity fatigue had hit by then, both for me and the general game buying audience (4e GURPS also never caught on quite the same as their 80s+90s edition did).

HERO 6 came too close on the heels of HERO 5.  The thing that becomes a problem is that you still need to buy figured stat levels at least where they would have been to have an effective character but the advantage is that the book keeping is much more straight forward.